I was notified by a friend that Tamino is slagging Anthony and me over at his blog, where I was banned from commenting years ago because I pointed out some unwanted facts to him. Of course, Tamino is still free to comment here, we don’t censor the views we might disagree with—that’s science.
To begin with, attacking a man where he cannot reply is just scummy. But that’s no surprise, it is Tamino after all. He doesn’t even have the albondigas to sign his own name to his own words … so I expect nothing from him and am yet to be disappointed. As Churchill is reputed to have said of one of his opponents, “He’s a humble man … and he has much to be humble about”.
Tamino’s post is called Why I call Anthony Watts and Willis Eschenbach “denier”. Charming. Of course, Tamino knows that this term “denier” was picked because of its association to “Holocaust denier”, and that it is an objectionable, anti-scientific term designed to pluck at his reader’s heartstrings and avoid their intellect … but like I said. Pond scum.
He claims that Anthony and I are “deniers” because in a post about the USCRN, the US Climate Reference network, I pointed out a fact, which is that the US has not shown any statistically significant warming since the USCRN started.
Tamino starts by agreeing with me:
The estimated trend is upward, but its uncertainty is large because the time covered is so short. I estimate the warming rate at 10 ± 14 °F/century (95% confidence limits). Because the uncertainty is so large, we say that the claim the trend is upward fails to reach “statistical significance.”
But he goes further:
If this was the only data we had, we would know that the trend was highly uncertain; it could be as low as cooling at 4 °F/century, but it could be warming at a whopping 24 °F/century.
But we do have more data for the “lower 48” states of the U.S., from the National Climate Data Center, all the way from 1895 to the present.
He then proceeds to post up a graph comparing the NCDC data from 1975 to the USCRN data from 2005.
Regarding this graph, Tamino says:
This makes it abundantly clear that ignoring the trend from NCDC data, mentioning only the USCRN data, helps our understanding not at all. It only serves one purpose: to muddy the waters.
Look, folks, that is comparing apples to oranges. By that logic, we should be able to throw up the trend from say 1940 to 2017 and claim that that “helps our understanding” of the much shorter trends … sorry, but that simply doesn’t work. And why did he pick 1975 as his start date?
So … what’s next? Is Tamino going to tell us that the trend from 1850 can help our understanding of the current hiatus in warming? How about the trend since 1650? Hey, it’s been warming since 1900, and according to Tamino, that should disprove the general warming hiatus from 1945 to 1975 … but actually, it does nothing of the sort.
Here’s a protip for Tamino. If you want to compare trends, you need to compare them over the same time span. I’d do that for the NCDC data that Tamino used, as I suspect that there is no significant trend in that as well … but then like far too many folks masquerading as scientists, he didn’t post a link to his data as used.
And in any case, as I said in my previous post:
So … still no significant trend. Yes, the dataset is short, 13 years … but there are a number of 13-year periods in US temperature history which do have significant trends.
Facts are stubborn things, and I know Tamino doesn’t like it, but the facts are that the best data we have say there is no significant warming since 2005. Adding other data from 1975 onward doesn’t tell us anything further about the post-2005 trend.
Ah, well, I take comfort in knowing that when I start taking flak, it means I’m over the target.
I’m still in the Solomon Islands, for reasons I related in my first post from there, Feasting. My second and third posts from the islands, entitled Munny and Hauling Out, are up at my blog, Skating Under The Ice. So while Tamino is gnashing his teeth and pointing fingers and angrifying his blood and wailing “Deniers! Deniers!” at Anthony and me … well, me, I’m living the dream … you’re welcome to come along.
My thanks as always to Anthony for this amazing blog, where people are free to hold far-ranging discussions on scientific matters. The current mania for censoring speech that people happen to disagree with, from Tamino’s and Gavin Schmidt’s blogs, to the Democratic Party refusing to condemn Antifa’s violent censorship, to the college campuses all across the US, is a horrible and worrisome trend. I stand for free speech, this blog stands for free speech. Tamino and Gavin stand for censorship, which should tell you something about the quality of their science. Go figure …
My best wishes for everyone,
w.
Added: It is important (at least to me) to point out that “Tamino” is actually Mr. Grant Foster of Portland Maine. I don’t have a whole lot of respect for people who label other people with pejoratives such as “denier” while being too cowardly to put his/her name to such labeling – Anthony Watts
Thanks, Anthony. Also, there are some interesting links in the “Related Posts” just below.
I use it because it is the alias that the coward is hiding behind. He didn’t reveal his identity, he was outed.
Also, many visitors to both his blog and this blog only know him by his alias.
w.
Typical Eschenbach……“the coward”
…
When you resort to name calling you’ve lost the argument.
Bob, the COWARD is indeed Tamino who attacks Anthony and Willis behind their backs, then fail to post the data for his silliness.
Tommy, it’s a shame you think calling people names helps your side of the argument. Defending Willis’s ad-hom (name calling) shows you are merely tribal.
Robert, its a shame you ignored this part:
“the COWARD is indeed Tamino who attacks Anthony and Willis behind their backs, then fail to post the data for his silliness.”
His cowardliness is demonstrated,which YOU fail to see.
Tommy, your name calling is shameful. When you resort to name calling you’ve lost the argument.
From the post:
“Of course, Tamino is still free to comment here, we don’t censor the views we might disagree with—that’s science.
To begin with, attacking a man where he cannot reply is just scummy. But that’s no surprise, it is Tamino after all. He doesn’t even have the albondigas to sign his own name to his own words … so I expect nothing from him and am yet to be disappointed. As Churchill is reputed to have said of one of his opponents, “He’s a humble man … and he has much to be humble about”.
Grant Foster can post his responses here, but too chicken to do it as he was that way at Bob Tisdale’s blog when he used to pick on him from long distance.
He has been known for years as Grant Foster, I KNEW this about 8-9 years ago,but he still hide behind Tamino.
That is pathetic!
What argument? You haven’t done that yet.
You need to stop being stupidly paternalistic.
Tommy asks: “What argument?” This one: ==== “Bob, the COWARD is indeed Tamino”
(Snipped)
(Why did I snip you,because you never been on topic after FIVE comments,make a big deal over what Willis states on a single word,which he backs up,no violation.You were wrong the entire time) MOD
“….and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted”
RE SNIPPED: “what Willis states on a single word”
…
How hypocritical………I’ll bet I’d be banned if I used the single word that begins with a “d” then is followed by an “e” then a “n”…………etc.
Also, many visitors to both his blog and this blog only know him by his alias.
w.
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 4:29 pm
Robert, I’m not “name calling” regarding Tamino. I am describing Tamino.
When you attack a man and you do not allow him to respond to your attacks that is cowardice. Period. It’s even recognized in US law that a man has a RIGHT, not an opportunity but a RIGHT, to confront his accusers.
I discuss Tamino here, and he is free to reply.
He discusses me there, and I am banned from replying.
If you do not see that as cowardice I feel sorry for you …
w.
All I see is you calling him names.
…
When you resort to name calling you’ve lost the argument.
…
And you can feel sorry for me if you wish, but all I’m doing is pointing out to you your ad-hom.
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 5:16 pm
As I said, if that is the outer limit to your vision, I pity you.
Robert, it appears that you don’t understand what an “ad hominem” argument is.
Any old statement about someone, however negative, is NOT an ad hominem.
An ad hominem is when you attack the man instead of attacking his ideas. However, I have been very clear and forceful about the problems with his ideas.
I have also pointed out that attacking a man when he can’t fight back is cowardice … a fact which you seem remarkably unwilling to even notice, much less address.
w.
Calling someone a “coward” is name-calling (which is what you have done.)
..
Describing something that someone has done as “cowardly” is not name calling.
..
You are guilty of calling Grant a coward. “….it is the alias that the coward is hiding behind.”
…
Name calling is an ad-hominem: http://whale.to/vaccine/propaganda3.html
Robert,
Calling someone a “coward” is name-calling (which is what you have done.)
..
Describing something that someone has done as “cowardly” is not name calling.
That is a distinction without a difference and is an obtuse reply. Note that I did not call you obtuse, I characterized what you have done as obtuse. That makes it ok, yes?
Also Willis, could you please tell us what you did on his site that earned your banishment?
I did nothing to earn anything.
w.
You posted something didn’t you?
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 5:48 pm
Posted something? “If it were so, it was a grievous fault …”
I’ve asked people to quote the exact words, so let me quote mine from below:
w.
Thank you very much Mr Eschenbach, now I know why Grant has banned you: ” You do understand that when you are no fun to play with, that people shun you, right? ”
…
You hit the nail on the head.
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 6:25 pm
Robert, now you are being childishly silly. My posts attract over a million page views per year. My post on warm things and cool things alone has 1,682 comments. I am the most popular of the guest commenters here. If that is your idea of people “shunning” me, I can only laugh and point and say “Bring that kind of shunning on!”.
As to why Tamino banned me, no, you don’t know why, despite your puerile claim that you do. You weren’t there, you don’t have a clue, don’t pretend. It’s not a good look on you.
In any case, it was something like a decade ago and so the details are fuzzy. From memory, in a discussion I claimed that the big increase in CO2 started around 1945. For some reason that agitated Tamino. He claimed it started much earlier, and he wanted me to disavow the statement. I wouldn’t, so he banned me.
However, I wasn’t upset about it. By that time I’d heard about his nefarious secret censorship practices, the practices that as far as I know you haven’t disavowed, so I felt lucky to have escaped before he started vanishing my comments without a trace.
w.
Eschenbach posts: “It’s even recognized in US law that a man has a RIGHT, not an opportunity but a RIGHT, to confront his accusers.”
..
Your knowledge of the Constitution stinks. You left out an important part of the 4th Amendment: ““in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
..
1) Blogging is not a “criminal prosecution”
2) This blog, and Foster’s are “private property” and not subject to your legal ignorance. You have no “right” on his blog, and if I’m not mistaken, this blog is not yours either.
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 5:25 pm
..
Dang, dawg, did someone piss in your Wheaties this morning? I’m not interested in discussing anything with someone who claims, based on nothing at all, that my knowledge of the Constitution stinks.
You have absolutely no idea what I know about the Constitution. None. Yet you are willing to attack me, based on the fact that I didn’t include 3 words. However, here was my statement:
Now, is that a RIGHT under US law? Sure. Sorry I didn’t quote the Constitution chapter and verse, but then nobody expects the Spanish Inquision … I figured that folks would figure out that when I said “under US law etc.” that I was talking about the courts. I didn’t realize that you needed special assistance, everyone else seems to have gotten my message.
Go bother someone else. I don’t have time to answer inane questions and take abuse from charming people like you.
You do understand that when you are no fun to play with, that people shun you, right? …. just checking …
w.
“Now, is that a RIGHT under US law?”
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No Willis, it is not.
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For one thing “laws” do not confer “rights.” Ever wonder why they called the first 10 amendments the Bill of RIGHTS?
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Another example of your lack of legal acumen.
“based on the fact that I didn’t include 3 words”
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Those three words are crucial. For example, in a civil case the “right” you describe does not exist.
@Robert Kernodle
just curious: in sort of civil case would someone NOT have a right to confront his accusers? I confess knowing little in legal matters, but it seems to me that “due process” include this right in ANY case. This right is even recognized out of the courts, in the press, or inside a company, and is, AFAIK, considered a pillar of western civilization (epitomized in Franz Kafka works). Enlighten me if I am wrong
Yes that is correct, Tamino is free to reply here. In fact, I offered him guest post opportunities on two occasions in the past and he turned them down.
Was it self-censorship or because he has nothing to say? Hmmm…
Willis,”I was notified by a friend that Tamino is slagging Anthony and me over at his blog,”
True
but he did try to improve
“Challenge to Anthony Watts — and to myself Posted on November 1, 2017
I’m going to try a new policy. We’ll see how it works out.
It’s this: stick to the science. No baseless ad hominem. No “demonizing” others. That goes for comments here as well.”
It just did not like last long.
But he did try on his blog up until his intemperant article on you.
No help I know……
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 6:05 pm
This is what you think is important? OK, lets discuss it.
The rights were conferred by the Constitution, but they are implemented by the laws. Here’s an example of one such law:
The Constitution granted the rights, but until they are enshrined in the law, they are meaningless.
So yes, Robert, we do have rights under US law … and I totally fail to see why this trivial nit-picking point is what you choose to focus on.
w.
Willis says: “The rights were conferred by the Constitution”
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Thank you, you’ll notice I said: “For one thing “laws” do not confer “rights.” I appreciate it when you see things my way.
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Now all we need to get you up to speed on are the words: “in all criminal prosecutions.”
…
PS, I like how my posts disappear too!
Robert Kernodle December 5, 2017 at 6:35 pm Edit
They would be crucial had I claimed anything about civil cases. In fact, I said we had rights under US law. I didn’t say they applied in all places and times, that’s all you.
w.
Robert Kernodle, a final note.
I said that it was vile for a man to attack someone without giving them the chance to respond, to confront the person accusing them.
Instead of agreeing that that was a bad thing, you dragged the conversation off into the constitution and US law and whether the right is a right under the law and how unutterably stupid I was about the Constitution …
… but you never had the albondigas to just say yes, that is indeed a vile and wrong thing for Tamino to do.
But heck, perhaps you just overlooked it in the joy of sidetracking the discussion, so I thought I’d give you one last chance to join the forces of light … speak up, now, so everyone can hear you.
w.
Hey Willis, go get RISTVAN to comment on your interpretation of the law in this case, he’s a lawyer.
@ur momisugly w.
“Live and learn” is a great thing.
I learned from your eyeopening article as much as from the occasionally really mean replies.
A thankful heretic.
Is the troll gone??
co2isnotevil December 6, 2017 at 9:39 am
The James Watt flyball governor is a control system. Would you say it is active or passive, and why?
w.
Willis,
A flyball governor is a ‘closed loop’ active control system that exhibits gain as it modulates the fuel flow into the engine which is amplified by burning that fuel, with a tiny part of that energy spinning the flyball. The idea is that a very small amount of energy is amplified to control a large source of energy. In fact, the closed loop gain is quite high and given by the ratio between the energy produced by the engine and the energy required to spin the flyball.
While you can consider many things in the climate system that modulate the incident or outgoing radiation, there’s no gain and no closed loop, thus no active control.
This is what seems to confuse people. The climate system is not a closed loop system, but an open loop system whose forward behavior is constrained by various temperature dependencies and not by active control.
Sorry, I meant the open loop gain is the ratio between the energy produced and the energy spinning the flyball. This is very large. The open loop gain of the climate system, at least per Hansen and Schlesinger’s application of Bode, is exactly 1. However; the concepts of open loop and closed loop do not apply to the climate as the climate system is neither a feedback amplifier or a feedback control system. To be clear, the Hansen/Schlesinger model based on Bode is not a feedback control system, but a feedback amplifier.
Simply put, the climate system doesn’t amplify solar input, it just redistributes it over time and space.
co2isnotevil December 7, 2017 at 11:56 am Edit
I fail to see the difference between that and the tropical cumulus/thunderstorm system. It also exhibits gain as it modulates the solar energy flow into the climate system which is amplified by the greenhouse effect, with a tiny part of that energy initiating the formation of the cumulus/thunderstorm system.
Just as with the flyball governor, a tiny amount of energy is used to control the huge amount of energy pouring into the system. This control is strong enough that on average the temperature of the tropical ocean goes DOWN when the cumulus field forms in the late morning, despite the increasing TOA solar input.
How is this not a tiny amount of energy controlling a large amount of energy?
It also exhibits the “overshoot” necessary to control a lagged system. This overshoot is visible in the dropping of the temperature BELOW the temperature necessary for cumulus formation.
It is also visible in the individual thunderstorms, which also drive the surface temperature below that required for their initiation.
The “greenhouse effect” absolutely amplifies solar input or we’d be a block of ice. And the clouds control the solar input, using a tiny bit of energy to block massive amounts of solar radiation from reaching the surface.
Look, we have a system whereby when the temperature exceeds a threshold, a mechanism using a tiny bit of incoming energy turns down the incoming solar radiation to stop further temperature rises.
How you can say this is not a control system escapes me … what am I missing here?
Thanks,
w.
This mechanism you found is water vapor/atm regulating warming during the day, what I found shows how water vapor then also controls cooling after sunset.
In coolings case, it cools quickly until air temps near dew point, then cooling rate slows 80-100%.
Since min T is dependent on dew point, and dew point is not dependent on co2, min T is not dependent on Co2, and Co2 has little ability to cause warming over night.
When cooling doesn’t stop during the night, any changes to day time max temp from increases in non-condensing GHG’s, would be the first radiated to space at sunset, at the high cooling rate. But you do lose the cooling time for the increased maxed T, from the slow cooling rate at sunrise.
So a 1F increase in Max T would be cause an increase in the following morning min T of ~0.13F, as it’s a ratio of the slow rate (0.5F/hr) divided by the fast rate (4F/hr) times the Temp change from non-condensing ghg’s.
Willis,
The difference is that one has powered gain and the other does not. GHG’s do not amplify, but delay energy emitted by the surface in order to add it to new energy arriving from the Sun in the future, where the energy emitted by the surface in the past originally came from the Sun. Look at the little piece of C code I posted earlier.
You’re also conflating a feedback amplifier, as the climate is incorrectly modelled, with a feedback control system. The purpose of feedback in an amplifier is to make the closed loop gain mostly independent of the open loop gain which can only happen when the open loop gain is much, much larger than the closed loop gain.
It’s also not a small amount of energy controlling a large amount of flux. The energy controlling the flux is about the same as the energy of the flux itself. At a little over 300K, evaporation starts to increase dramatically where the average energy removed from the ocean by latent heat and dumped into the atmosphere becomes about equal to the average incident energy from the Sun.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens/st_wc.png
The Y axis is the water column in grams per cm^2 and the X axis is the surface temperature in degrees K. Each small dot is 1 month of date for a 2.5 degree slice of latitude and 3 decades of monthly averages are shown.
Amplification is boosting a small input signal into a larger output signal by adding energy from an implicit power supply.
This implicit, internal source of power is required by both feedback amplifiers and feedback control systems and is missing from the climate even as it’s assumed to exist. This is the defining attribute that distinguishes an active system from a passive one because you can’t have active gain without an implicit power supply.
The implicit power supply can not be the Sun, since the Sun is already the forcing input to the model. It would be like instead of plugging your stereo into a wall socket to power the gain, you power your stereo with the output of your turntable which is also the input to the amplifier.
The fundamental flaw in considering feedback representative at all is that a feedback system, per Bode, samples the input to determine how much output to deliver from an implicit supply. The climate system consumes the input (forcing power) to produce its output (surface emissions). The temperature output of the model is simply surface emissions converted into a temperature by SB (although I was never able to get Schlesinger to admit this). The failure of their model is to ignore COE between the forcing input power and the required power emitted by the surface in order to sustain the presumed temperature rise.
Per the Hansen/Schlesinger feedback model, the open loop gain of the climate system is 1 and the closed loop gain is 1.6, that is, for each Joule of energy that arrives from the Sun, the surface emits 1.6 Joules. While this can be modelled with unit open loop gain and 37.5% positive feedback, it can be equally modelled as an amplifier with an open loop gain of 1000 and 63.5% negative feedback. In fact, for any arbitrary value of the open loop gain, a value of feedback can be found that will result in a closed loop gain of 1.6.
Modelling the climate as a feedback amplifier means that the extra 0.6 Joules came from the implicit power supply, when in fact, it came from the surface a short time in the past. The fact that an internal source of energy is presumed is how they can support 4.3 Joules of surface emissions per Joule of input, where the extra 3.3 Joules comes from the implicit power supply that isn’t really there. Clearly, it can’t come from past surface emissions as it’s larger than what is available from those emissions.
They try to fudge around this by calling the sensitivity an incremental metric. This would mean that the next Joules of input is about 2.7 times more powerful at warming the surface than any of the previous Joules, which of course is impossible since all Joules are the same. More to the point, if the incremental gain and average gain are different, then Bode’s linearity precondition is not met and calling anything feedback is meaningless.
I like this chart, it includes both the warm and cold cycles, as it has to.
This is the wrong model, stop trying to reference this to deny it. It’s wrong.
It is a regulator (much like a switching regulator), that runs on the input power to regulate it’s output to some level below the drop out “voltage” of the regulator. The work the regulator has to do to do the regulating.
The daily Solar pulse is the energy input into the system, and the regulating system uses that to regulate surface air temps to within ~5-10% in absolute temps, by controlling both input and output power streams.
It’s not an amplifier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay?
And I don’t care what climate scientists think about electronics models, I care how I would model it when I did that for a living.
micro6500,
“I like this chart, it includes both the warm and cold cycles, as it has to.”
Follow this link and you will find more than 50 other plots like this, each of which is a scatter plot of 3 decades of monthly averages for 2.5 degree slices of latitude of one climate variable plotted against another:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens
Most interesting is clouds and other things that exhibit control like influences, but are really not. A simple and accurate passive model of the energy balance can be inferred from the average relationships between the climate variables as illustrated by these plots. Note that the dynamics of the atmosphere and its interactions with the surface are not explicitly accounted for, but implicitly accounted as their average behavior affects the measured relationships between the various climate variables.
micro6500,
Yes, the Hansen/Schlesinger feedback model of the climate system is absolutely wrong. My point is that the very concept of feedback has no relevance to how the climate works. It’s difficult for many to grasp because the concept has been so widely misapplied and both sides depend on feedback in order to explain their respective positions.
Positive or negative feedback is irrelevant and the effects you and Willis are observing are not properly considered active feedback control mechanisms. I’m not saying that the effects you’re observing don’t exist. Just that you’re misinterpreting what you are seeing. They’re more properly considered non linearities in the response that seem to arise from the temperature dependent flux of latent heat. They may mimic controlling like behaviors over narrow ranges of conditions, but they’re not properly quantifiable as active feedback control mechanisms.
Technically, the input to the system is energy from the Sun, while the output is what the planet emits, which based on COE must be the same, thus the gain of the system is 1. Attempting to call the surface the output of the system also contributes to the widespread misinformation about feedback.
A regulator must have gain. For example, in a classic linear regulator, there’s gain between the gate of the pass transistor and the regulated output. In a switching supply, there’s gain between the gate of the switching transistor and its load. Every transistor or fet in the circuit has gain. You can’t build a regulator without gain. Even electromechanical regulators have identifiable gain.
An unregulated supply, for example, a transformer, diode bridge and a filter capacitor is a passive circuit. Even so, it will still be capable of maintaining a relatively constant voltage over a wide range of loads, just not to the nearly absolute level of precision you can achieve with active regulation. Even if you add a highly non-linear thermistor to the mix, it’s still a passive circuit.
Thanks, CO2.
In a flyball governor, a very small expenditure of energy in the form of the shifting of the flyballs is throttling the incoming steam power by hundreds of watts.
In the tropics, a very small expenditure of energy in the form of cumulus cloud formation is throttling the incoming solar power by hundreds of watts.
How is the first one a governor and not the second one? Both are using a small amount of energy to regulate hundreds of watts of incoming energy. Both use ambient conditions to determine when to reduce or increase incoming power.
On my planet, anything with a system which varies the incoming power based on the conditions internal to the system is “governed”.
Comments?
w.
Willis,
It’s not a small amount of energy that goes into to forming cumulus clouds. There’s the latent heat of its water as evaporated from the surface, the potential energy of liquid water lifted against gravity and the electrical energy stored in the capacitance formed between clouds, the surface, the ionosphere, themselves and each other.
As I said, it may mimic a governor like effect over a narrow range of conditions, but it isn’t properly characterized as a feedback control system like a flyball governor can be.
It’s certainly true that the exponentially increasing rate of evaporation as a function of temperature has a limiting effect on the maximum ocean temperature, at least until the oceans have completely evaporated. This isn’t a like a an active feedback system maintaining a constant boiler pressure, but something more like the non linearity of the reverse breakdown of a semiconductor junction or even its forward conduction characteristic.
The flyball is an active control system with identifiable gain, while a zener diode is passive nonlinear device designed so that reverse breakdown is non destructive. It has no identifiable gain and can not be modelled with any any kind of feedback circuit. In fact, if you look at the plot of the water column vs. surface temperature in a previous post, it looks like the I/V characteristic of a really poor diode.
There’s gain in this system as well, a small drop in air temp makes a big difference in cooling rates.
That’s what I keep trying to get people to recognize, it’s why net radiation drops off, it’s isn’t equilibrium.
It’s not gain. The small drop in air temp is not ‘amplified’, but just happens to be the point where the air temperature becomes equal to the dew point and which occurs when the relative humidity reaches 100%, thus the temperature is also a function of the absolute humidity. Technically, the delta T is the change in temperature required to increase the relative humidity to 100%.
Globally, it certainly contributes to equilibrium as long as you account for the return of latent heat to the surface as dew condenses on it.
Yes it is, that small drop, stopped about 18F in this case
micro6500,
You understand electronic components. Can you see how a zener diode has a behavior similar to a regulator but can not be modelled as an active feedback control system like an active regulator can? This is exactly analogous to why the effect you’re seeing can not be modelled as an active control system. The knee of the temperature curve depends on what the absolute humidity and temperature were when the Sun set and for all intents and purposes, this is arbitrary and not under any kind of control.
Also, the effect is local, much like the limiting temperature over the oceans when latent heat from evaporation becomes equal to incident energy. Globally, the dew point effect is returning to the surface latent heat that came from somewhere else. In the same way, the latent heat entering the atmosphere as a result of limiting ocean temperatures is redistributed towards the poles.
Think of it like a balloon. The amount of air inside (energy) is constant and if you push in one place, it bulges out in another.
No, this isn’t modeled by a zenor, this has a family of curves over humidity, both absolute and relative (thru temp). Have you read the nocturnal 2m temp paper linked to the nonlinear cooling blog , just follow my name.
I’ve read the article and scanned the paper, and the reason the cooling slows down at the dew point is because latent heat stored in the atmosphere during the day is being returned back to the surface as the dew condenses during the night. Where the slope changes is not a set point, but an inflection point where this return starts and is dependent on the starting temperature and humidity.
During the day, there’s another inflection point where warming starts slowing down at a temperature where evaporation starts up again once the relative humidity gets low enough. Together, these two effect are hysteresis like.
Evaporation has another similar property, where below the 0C ‘setpoint’, there’s little to no evaporation and water vapor while above it, surface cooling from latent heat and GHG effects from water vapor start to become important and at about 300K, latent heat becomes more important then the incident solar power. This is evident in many of the plots in the links I referred you to, both at temperatures of 0C and at about 300K. The 0K setpoint is actually a fixed temperature threshold, but isn’t a thermostatic regulation point either. These things are all just inflection points in the transfer functions relating various climate variables.
Yet another 0C inflection point occurs as ice melts cooling the surface owing to the latent heat of fusion.
I’m also aware the dew point limit is not a constant limit and this is another reason why it’s not a regulatory process, but one of many different temperature dependent processes that distributes energy between and within the surface and atmosphere.
Another way to think of this is as the difference between a regular pyramid and a stepped pyramid. Both start at the same place (top) and traversing down a face, end at the same place (bottom), except that the stepped pyramid is not a linear descent and has a few stops along the way.
I agree with everything other than on it being active, look at the net radiation flux, as current.
In the context of feedback and gain, active and passive have very specific meanings. You should look at Bode’s book to see the formal difference. Section 1.3 (page 4) is an overview of mesh equations for passive circuits and section 1.4 (page 6) is an overview of mesh equations for active circuits. The first sentence of section 1.4 explains how a tube (gain block) and its implicit power supply are what differentiates an active circuit from a passive one.
And you didn’t do much transistor level analysis?
I did quite a bit of transistor level design and analysis. Analog and digital from DC to Ghz.
Okay, zeners are nothing more that a consistent reverse bias breakdown voltage. That isnt an analog of what’s going on.
What I found is min T follows water vapor distribution from the oceans, and the NH is more sensitive than the SH because of land mass asymmetry.
And cooling most places has a 2 state cooling system based on water vapor, actually maybe 1 stage cooling and then it transitions to its warming stage, in either case it is a switch, and it is not fixed to anything other than pressure, temp, and dew point. Co2 is not pertinent. That’s the whole point, min T is dependent in water vapor, and co2 has little to no effect.
co2isnotevil December 7, 2017 at 5:32 pm
The amount of sun coming down at noon in the tropics is on the order of a kilowatt. This is throttled by the clouds, regulating the temperature. Whether it takes 1%, 10%, or 25% of the incoming energy to do that doesn’t change the fact that it is operating in exactly the same fashion as a flyball governor.
Narrow range of conditions? Where did that come from? The combination of the various natural temperature regulating mechanisms has kept the planet’s average temperature from varying by more than half a degree over the entire 20th century … and you think that is some kind of weak system?
However, now I understand your point. The tropical temperature regulating system works exactly like a flyball governor, but it is not one.
You’ll have to explain how that works …
w.
Willis,
The narrow conditions are that it only has effect over oceans and not land, whose upper limit temperature is limited only by solar input.
The tropical temperature limiter doesn’t work like a governor which is an active feedback control system and can not be modelled as one, moreover; the set point of a flyball governor can be adjusted, which is another property of active control.
The limiting temperature over ocean is a function of when the latent heat of evaporation exceeds the incident energy. This isn’t a feedback control system and doesn’t actually regulate the temperature as the temperature is still a function of the incident energy, it’s just that as the energy increases, the local temperature increases more slowly because more energy enters the atmosphere and more energy is transported away towards the poles. It’s really a method of energy redistribution and the global temperature is still affected even as the local temperature is limited.
A zener diode behaves like a regulator, but it can not be modelled as a feedback control system either, while an active regulator constructed with active components can, moreover; an active regulator has an adjustable set point.
Thanks, CO2. I’m writing this powered by the island generator here on Liapari Island in the Solomons where I’m working on a boat.
I know the governor on that generator well. It’s a flyball governor. It is built to keep the generator running at exactly 50 Hz. As a result, it doesn’t have an adjustable set point.
You say:
So according to your theories, this is also something that looks and acts like a flyball governor, but isn’t actually one?
You also say:
Not true. Your “narrow conditions” cover all of the wet tropics, not just the ocean, and actually extend well out past the tropics over the ocean. You get the same kind of thermal regulatory system in England, I’ve seen it in action. You also get it in New Mexico, hardly the ocean, I’ve seen it there when the Southwest monsoon is in operation. Clear in the morning, and then when the temperature rises the cumulus set in. If the temperature keeps rising the thunderstorms form, removing vast amounts of energy from the surface and cooling the surface well below the initiation temperature … the “overshoot” required to govern a lagged system.
So, “narrow”? Hardly. The cloud throttle covers the important part of the planet, the tropics. Half of all the incoming energy hits the earth between 25°N and 25°S, so the throttle is placed where it will have the most effect.
So let me ask again:
In a flyball governor, a very small expenditure of energy in the form of the shifting of the flyballs is throttling the incoming steam power by hundreds of watts.
In the tropics, a very small expenditure of energy in the form of cumulus cloud formation is throttling the incoming solar power by hundreds of watts.
What’s the difference?
We’ve established that a flyball governor doesn’t need an adjustable set point, so that objection is invalid. We’ve established that the dynamics of the system are the same whether it takes 1% or 25% of the energy to run the flyball, so that objection is invalid. We’ve established that the system governs the majority of the region where the majority of the energy enters the system, so the “narrow” objection is invalid … so what is the difference?
Thanks for persevering,
w.
I’ll bet I can I adjust it to 60 Hz by adding some weight to the flyball.
“what’s the difference?”
The difference is that tropical cloud formation isn’t a global surface temperature regulatory process converging to a set point, but is the consequence of an inflection point in the transfer function between ocean surface temperatures and the water column as shown in the earlier plot. The local effect it appears to have in the tropics is offset by excess warming towards the poles.
It’s not regulating the global temperature, but smoothing temperature change across space and time.
co2isnotevil December 7, 2017 at 8:48 pm
Yes, and I can adjust it by breaking one weight off … so what?
w.
co2isnotevil December 7, 2017 at 9:06 pm Edit
What “previous plot”? I didn’t put up any plot of what I think is happening.
I love these kinds of uncited, unreferenced statements. You know this how?
CO2, the earth runs at a temperature well over what the S-B equation predicts. How warm it gets depends inter alia on the clouds … which come and go all the time. And the wind. Which goes up and down all the time. And the albedo. Which is constantly changing. And the presence or absence of aerosols from volcanoes. Which come and go.
But the temperature of the earth hasn’t changed by 1% in the last 300 years.
Two choices. Either we are incredibly lucky … or there is some kind of thermal regulation going on that keeps the temperature within very narrow bounds. As a man who had dealt with governors, I assure you that regulating a system to within 1% is not something that happens by luck.
So I would ask, if you don’t think that the various emergent phenomena I’ve describle are regulating the earth’s temperature to within ± half a percent over 300 years … then what is? The fact that the sun is stable doesn’t explain it, we’re running way about what the sun would predict.
Here is another puzzle. Despite the fact that there is much more land in the northern hemisphere and that the surface albedo is quite different between land and ocean, the overall albedo of the two hemispheres is almost identical. In other words, the clouds take up the slack … again, luck, coincidence, or regulatory mechanism?
To me, the stability of the system is clear evidence of SOME kind of temperature regulation. I have demonstrated how this regulation takes place in the tropics in a number of posts, using a number of datasets from a number of locations.
So … are you saying that there are no thermoregulatory mechanisms at work? And if there are … what do you think they are?
Thanks,
w.
Willis,
The plot I reference was one I supplied in an earlier reply and shows the relationship of monthly averages between the surface temperature and the water column for each 2.5 degree slice of latitude.
I know that power is transferred from the tropics to the poles for many reasons. First, because during the long polar winter, the poles remain warmer than they would without power coming from the tropics. My analysis of the ISCCP weather satellite data also confirms and can quantify this transfer of energy along with other known modes of transfer like the Gulf Stream.
The SB equation predicts the exact temperature of the surface once you apply a non unit emissivity, which is about 0.61. This can be derived from reflectivity and absorption coefficients and average cloud properties, all of which are well reported in the ISCCP data set. It also happens to be equal to the ratio between the 255K emissions of the planet and the 288K emissions of the surface (255/288)^4.
The average temperature hasn’t changed very much in the last 300 years because the solar output has been relatively constant and net effects of orbital change haven’t added up to much recently. In fact, this has been the case for the last 20K years or so and we have been relatively lucky that the climate has been stable enough for mankind to advance out of the stone age. Things will be quite different in 11K years when perihelion aligns with the N summer, rather then the N winter as it currently does. The difference between summer and winter will be quite a bit larger the
I measure an average albedo of about 0.31 in the S hemisphere and 0.29 in the N hemisphere. Both vary sinusoidally around this mean during the year with a little more variability in the S hemisphere.
The apparent global regulation of averages is simply a consequence of a relatively fixed number of Joules arriving at the planet every year. Locally, it actually varies quite a bit around the mean during the course of a year and nearly all of the average variability is sinusoidal in nature. It’s not a regulated system, but a causal system.
They are fixed for a reason.
Willis,
The only thing I can think of is that the average emissivity, e ~ (255/288)^4, is controlled such that 1/e = 1 + e, although it’s not clear to me yet why this would be the ‘attractor’ of the system. It does happen to be true and the monthly average emissivity has varied by no more than about 3.3% around this mean during the last 3 decades.
If it’s the emissivity that’s ‘controlled’, it does mean that incremental CO2 will be compensated for, but this doesn’t mean the temperature is regulated as the temperature will still go up an down as solar input varies.
I said:
You replied:
co2isnotevil December 7, 2017 at 10:50 pm
I give up. If you won’t even discuss, much less deal with, my objections I’m not interested in continuing the discussion. The sun is not what is keeping it stable at 33° or whatever above the S-B temperature. I’ll believe you for the moon. But for the earth?
The sun provides a stable floor in terms of AVAILABLE power … but even that is meaningless, because the clouds allow in variable amounts of it over the year. So the amount of energy ENTERING the system is not constant … and thus, “the sun” can’t be the answer to why the temperature is stable.
w.
Willis,
You are incorrect when you state that the Earth does not obey the SB Law. It must as this is the ONLY law of physics that relates temperature to radiation. The Earth is not like the Moon which is close to an ideal BB. The emissivity is part of the SB equation as well and when you set the emissivity to 0.61, the surface temperature associated with planet’s emissions is exactly what it should be, moreover; as the surface temperature varies, the emissions follow according to the SB law.
While the planet is not an ideal BB, the surface itself is relatively close. Since the Earth does not emit all of the BB emissions of the surface into space, the emissions that don’t leave the planet can only be captured the atmosphere and temporarily stored in GHG’s and clouds. Since the atmosphere has a limited capacity to store energy, in the steady state, it must be emitting the same amount of energy that it’s absorbing. Some of this is emitted into space and the rest is emitted back to the surface. It’s this return of past surface emissions temporarily stored by clouds and GHG’s, combined with new power from the Sun that makes the surface warmer than it would be due to the Sun alone.
The energy from the Sun is mostly constant when considering yearly averages. If there’s a little more than average, the planet is a little warmer and if there’s a little less, it’s cooler, Average cloud cover is also relatively constant.
You are focused on the low level local mechanisms the atmosphere uses to redistribute energy, whereas I’m focused on how the planet MUST behave from a macroscopic point of view in order to conform to the laws of physics. The primary mechanism establishing the surface temperature is the T^4 dependence of the SB Law which is independent of the emissivity.
co2, let me suggest that you read these two posts (post1, post2) about the stability and symmetry of the climate system. It is NOT due, as you claim, to the stability of the sun.
w.
Willis Eschenbach December 6, 2017 at 12:18 pm Edit
co2isnotevil December 6, 2017 at 9:39 am
micro6500,
The climate system is not an active system. The distinction between an active and passive system is active gain. Active gain is powered gain where more power comes out of the amplifier than goes in and the additional output power comes from an implicit power supply. This is what Bode means by the requirement for an implicit power supply powering the gain that he spells out in the first paragraph of his book.
The effect of the tropical cumulus cloud field plus the tropical thunderstorms is a temperature-threshold-based control system regulating the tropical temperatures.
Active or passive?
w.
Passive, for the reasons cited above.
Active or passive? W.
my 2 cents. It’s ACTIVE from a circuit analysis perspective. (All Earth system excepting geothermal are passive from a physics perspective.)
An ‘active’ circuit element is one which can amplify via negative resistance. For example an NPN transistor circuit can be configured so increased current results in a decreased voltage drop (from collector to emitter).
Tidal resonance in the Bay of Fundy is PASSIVE because it is analogous to a high Q RLC resonant circuit consisting of all passive elements. On the other hand, the solar-wind mediation of global temperature is ACTIVE because it analogizes to a small signal transistor amplifier, a circuit which exhibits negative resistance.
When increased TOA insolation results in decreased surface temperature (because of tropical cloud formation), it is analogous to negative resistance. Therefore from the circuit analysis perspective, the cloud thermostat is an ACTIVE circuit.
blueice2hotsea,
You seem to be confusing active with dynamic and/or non linear. Yes, the climate system is both dynamic and non linear, but there’s no active gain and a circuit model of the climate must be strictly passive.
The necessary requirement for an active circuit is an implicit, internal source of Joules to power the gain. A power supply is even required to manifest gain from the negative resistance of a tunnel diode. Such a power supply does not exist in the climate system. The climate is a passive system with Joules coming in, Joules going out and no implicit source of additional Joules to amplify the output making it larger than the input. Confusion arises as the climate feedback model incorrectly assumes that the surface [temperature] is the output, while the output of the system is actually the emissions from the planet into space.
The implicit source of Joules can not be the Sun, as the Sun is the source of all forcing. Considering the Sun as both the implicit power supply and the forcing is no different than connecting the input of a stereo amplifier (forcing input) and its power cord (implicit power supply) to the output of your turntable (forcing source).
Keep in mind that we’re talking about power gain as power gain is required to boost 1 W/m^2 of forcing into the 4.3 W/m^2 required to replace the emissions of a surface 0.8C warmer as presumed by the IPCC. The extra 600 mw/m^2 from the 1.6 W/m^2 of actual surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing is not a manifestation of gain, but a manifestation of delay and from a circuit perspective can be implemented with a delay line that returns some fraction of prior surface emissions back to the surface in the future.
Consider a transformer, which is a passive device. It can manifest apparent voltage gain (or current gain), but will never manifest power gain since COE limits the power leaving the transformer secondary to be less than the power arriving to the primary, just as COE limits the power leaving the planet to the power arriving.
@co2,
You’re wrong. The Sun supplies just such Joules, which are absorbed in a number of different systems, and it is this power that controls how fast it cools at night, just as if there was a transistor between the surface and space under clear skies that is on at dusk, and shuts off when air temp nears dew point.
You can’t do that with a zener without changing it’s breakdown voltage, and that’s baked into the die. What is needed is a switch, and we have a temperature controlled switch.
micro6500,
The Joules from the Sun are forcing, nothing more, nothing less. These Joules simply can’t also be the Joules coming from the implicit power supply that’s a necessary part of any system with active gain.
I can trivially create a circuit to model the relationship between the Sun, the surface and the planets emissions using a passive network (i.e. no internal source of power). The model is comprised of a resistor with a significant temperature coefficient, a capacitor, a delay line and a few transformers. Relative to the average behavior, this model works better than any GCM. The little snippet of code I showed you in an earlier response illustrates the basics of this model.
The dew effect you observe is only half of it. If you look at when temperatures rises, there’s another inflection point where warming slow down once evaporation kicks back in. This is a classic example of hysteresis.
Explain how slowing down warming during the day, combined with slowing down cooling at night is having any effect on the average? If it’s not keeping the average constant, it’s not regulating the temperature. Otherwise, the relationship between the surface temperature and total forcing goes as T^4 and the data is absolutely clear about this.
You lack imagination. And you’re wrong, you can not model cooling based on passive elements in anyway that can be superimposed over actual physical processes., the decay is not equilibrium, nor does it follow a capacities discharge rate, and where do you expect to find a transformer?
It has a single temperature controlled switch (cooling). The fact you think it’s going to give process level temperature control is just silly.
Imagination can’t defy reality. Beside, the passive model I have works exactly relative to how the AVERAGE responds to change.
You still haven’t explained how your proposed mechanism changes the average. Unless it does this, it can’t be a regulation mechanism. All it’s doing is redistributing energy captured during the day into the night. The day time max is lower and night time min is higher while the average remains the same. The changing slopes are not characteristic of regulation, but of hysteresis.
And the average response? You’re kidding, the average?
micro6500,
The average is all that matters relative to any change in the steady state and this is what climate change is all about. In principle, it’s not an average temperature, since non linearities preclude temperatures from being summed and averaged, but it’s the equivalent temperature of a BB emitting the average emissions of the surface, where emissions can be legitimately summed and averaged.
The average emissions of the surface are linearly related to the average absorption and emissions of clouds and GHG’s, the emissions of the planet and the incident energy. If you look at the scatter plots here,
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens, all of these linear relationships are clearly supported with the data.
Averages are meaningless if you do not understand the underlying circuit. You’ve modeled meaningless average values.
No. I’ve modelled averages whose variability is validated with data.
Again, I’ll ask you how does redistributing energy from the day time into the night time to slow down cooling, when the extraction of that energy during the day slowed down warming?
You seem to be falling into the same trap as warmist who believe that energy can just magically appear out of nowhere.
That’s still not the underlying process. Water and water vapor move, from tropics towards to poles, and it has to cool on the way.
It cools mostly by returning the latent heat to the surface either as rain, dew or weather in general.
You don’t seem to acknowledging the importance of averages. Averages are all that matter relative to long term change. It’s not what happens in 1 hour at night, but the average of what happens across the whole planet over days, months or years.
You must agree that the average temperature is warmer in summer and cooler in winter. This difference is not meaningless, is not by accident. defies the existence of a regulatory process and is strictly causal to the amount of incident solar energy.
What the transfer of energy from the tropics to the poles does is reduce the sensitivity when expressed as degrees per W/m^2 while the sensitivity expressed as W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing is relatively constant from pole to pole. In fact, it seems to reduce it to the sensitivity to that of a BB at the surface temperature, which is only about 0.2C per W/m^2 which is less than the theoretical upper limit of 0.3C per W/m^2.
The reason this happens is that given the sensitivities 1/T^3 dependence (when expressed as degrees per W/m^2), the reduction in energy in the warm tropics has a smaller effect on the temperature than adding that same amount of energy to the much colder polar regions. This is what makes a sensitivity metric as degrees per W/m^2 so bogus. By this metric, the sensitivity is different everywhere on the planet and every day while a sensitivity metric expressed as W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing is independent of temperature and mostly constant everywhere.
Have you read my 3 pages at wordpress? Before you make assumptions about what I think, and find important, maybe you can look at the work I’ve done that shows the results of the data I’ve looked at in what I think has relevance. Just follow my name.
But let me add the bit about summer and winter averages treats me like an idiot, have you calculated that slope for every surface station and looked at various areas seasonal slope? You have no clue.
I’ve looked at your stuff and understand what you’re seeing. I just don’t see it as regulating the temperature.
I see this (and some others) as moderating temperatures by moving energy that would otherwise make an already hot place warmer to make a cold place warmer instead. Whether this is between day and night or the tropics and the poles, it’s the redistribution of a finite pool of Joules and has a zero sum influence on the average emissions and its corresponding EQUIVALENT temperature.
My point about winter/summer is not to denigrate, but to make the point that the temperature is not regulated, but even here there’s some moderation that makes the winter a little warmer at the expense of making the summer a little cooler. This is mostly in the form of the oceans thermal inertia.
Moderation and regulation are two different things. Moderation draws the peak temperatures closer together, while regulation would keep the midpoint between the peaks at a constant temperature.
No, summer and winter are from changing length of day compared to night, it changes, that alters incoming energy, as does the our orbit that has the NH closer to the sun in the winter.
On that, the ocean cycles shift warm water around, changing the distribution of water vapor. And the NH responds more than the SH to changes in the oceans because there mire land in the NH.
Yes, the day length is changing resulting in the amount of incident energy changing. If the Sun was weaker or stronger, the temperatures would be different even as the day length remains the same. If the length of the day was the thermostat set point as you suggest, the temperature would be the same independent of the strength of the Sun.
Yes, the SH changes more slowly due to its larger fraction of water and the result is temperatures are moderated more in the S than the N which translates into a smaller difference between summer and winter in the S than in the N, even as the forcing power varies over a wider range in the S owing to how perihelion aligns with the seasons.
Power gain is an important differentiator between regulation and moderation. If the atmosphere exhibited power gain in any way shape or form, it would be violating COE. Regulation requires high power gain, while moderation is an intrinsically passive process, as evidenced by the moderating effect of oceans, which from a circuit point of view can be modelled as a passive capacitor.
Did I mention I calculate the insolation for every station(20 some thousand), for every day from 1940 on? As the days get shorter, it cools longer at night, that reduces day time air temps, and dew point. Go look at my pages, you still do not know all I’ve done so far.
Switching power supply. All it needs is a nonlinear switch to work.
I understand what you’re seeing and it would surprise me if you didn’t see this owing to the relationships between the solar input, temperature, absolute humidity, relative humidity and dew point.
Which comes first? Obviously the solar input and everything else just follows. Even the absolute humidity, whose average is dependent on the average temperature while it’s instantaneous value varies over a relatively wide range around this average. If you look at the earlier scatter plots, the relationship between the temperature and the water column, which is proportional to absolute humidity, follows a very tight distribution.
The dew point and relative humidity aren’t actually measured by weather stations, but are calculated from the measured temperature and absolute humidity.
The atmosphere can supply the non linearity you need, but there’s no active switch, it’s just the non linearity combined with the hysteresis effect of rising and falling temperatures relative to evaporation and condensation.
Even if you can model this as a switching supply, the atmosphere can’t. The atmosphere can only implement it as a passive system because it has no internal source of energy to boost the output. Stored energy doesn’t comprise an internal source, as that stored energy came from the forcing (Sun) in the first place.
Yes it does, it’s just delayed joules, and there’s huge areas evaporating ocean, and warm and cold pools and gyres.
And you can see the effect of this transition in net radiation
And this
Shows that the optical window has to have 20-30W/m^2 outgoing radiation, even as temos have stopped falling under clear skies. Something is powering that balancing radiation, and it’s balancing which is why co2 doesn’t affect it much, if it was warmer at sunset, it just doesn’t switch to slow cooling till it drops the same as the increase. If it was a 1F increase, and it cools at dusk at 4F/hr, it delays the switch for 15 minutes. If the final cooling rate is 0.5F/hr, it reduces cooling by the same 15 minutes, so a 1F increase has a residual of 0.125F. And in nights it stops cooling it’s 0.
If you think about it the planet is the bulb of a liquid glass thermometer, and column height is temp once you calibrate it.
The surface is always emitting based on its temperature and cools as it emits energy. It stops cooling in this case because once dew starts to form, the latent heat that was removed from the surface by evaporation is returned, offsetting the emissions keeping the surface temperature from dropping. Of course, once frost precipitates most of the water out of the atmosphere, the cooling will never slow down until the Sun rises.
I don’t see how this precludes an effect from CO2 though, as the additional CO2 can still increase the day time high temperatures just like a stronger Sun would.
It there’s anything mitigating the effect of CO2, it’s something that drives the average ratio between surface emissions and planet emissions because the data indicates that this ratio is one of the most constant properties of the climate system. The next most constant property is the average ratio between the surface emissions absorbed by the atmosphere and the fraction of those emissions returned to the surface. The monthly averages of both varies by no more than a few percent around its mean which in the first case is 1.615 and in the second case is 0.50.
Here is my answer from last night.
“If it was a 1F increase, and it cools at dusk at 4F/hr, it delays the switch for 15 minutes. If the final cooling rate is 0.5F/hr, it reduces cooling by the same 15 minutes, so a 1F increase has a residual of 0.125F. And in nights it stops cooling it’s 0.”
Do you not understand this? What makes it a regulator is that the switch between these two states is a temperature property. And is do to the heat of evaporation that has to be liberated to allow condensation, and it’s 4.21J/g more than just cooling that air and water mass by 1 degree.
What I have been explaining is why the second one is constant. The energy that has to be liberated is the source of the DWIR, but because they average it out, you can’t tell what process is the cause. that’s what the chart from Australia shows, that net radiation switching state.
I understand what you’re seeing and saying, but it’s not characterizable as a switching regulator. I certainly see how this effect acts to moderate highs and lows by transferring energy from day to night and from the tropics to the poles through evaporation and condensation, but that doesn’t correspond to an effect that regulates the average.
The second constant, that is the fraction of surface emissions absorbed by the atmosphere and returned to the surface, is constant because the geometry is constant.
The atmosphere ultimately emits the surface emissions it absorbs over twice the area over which it absorbed that energy , thus it emits half out into space and the rest back to the surface.
The effect you’re seeing certainly contributes to the 0.62 ratio between surface emissions and planet emissions, but so do innumerable other effects and you can’t focus on a single effect to the exclusion of the many others all acting in concert. The fact that this ratio is relatively constant is not regulation, except to keep the sensitivity when expressed as W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing relatively constant. This is not a temperature regulating effect but could be construed as a sensitivity regulating effect. None the less, it’s not active regulation, but the result of a passive and causal response to incident forcing and the 0.62 can be calculated top down as a function of GHG concentrations and the properties of clouds, so unless the properties of clouds adjust in response to CO2 concentrations, there’s no offsetting effects to increasing CO2 concentrations. We don’t see any effects because the effect is far, far smaller than claimed and not because it’s being mitigated by other processes.
“I understand what you’re seeing and saying, but it’s not characterizable as a switching regulator. I certainly see how this effect acts to moderate highs and lows by transferring energy from day to night and from the tropics to the poles through evaporation and condensation, but that doesn’t correspond to an effect that regulates the average.”
Of course it does, you just don’t see it because you’re looking at the ripple, look at temps scaled in degrees K from 3K, because that’s the the reference point in the system.
And of course I can focus on one effect if it’s forcing is 10:1 all the others.
You are still ignoring that there is an energy boundary to air temps dropping below dew point. A big one.
I’m not ignoring what you’re referring to as an energy boundary. As I see it, it’s simply a hysteresis effect between the temperature and atmospheric water relative to when evaporation starts (the inflection point as temperatures rise) and when condensation starts (the inflection point as temperatures fall). It’s simply the consequence of latent heat redistributing a fixed pool of energy across time and space.
I also don’t see the 10:1 difference you’re citing. The temperature drops until dew starts to form, where the latent heat from the original evaporation is returned to the surface slowing down it’s cooling. As temperatures rise, water starts to evaporate slowing down the warming. I just can’t see how these two offsetting effects have any effect at regulating the surface temperature, although they clearly moderate the difference between min and max temperatures.
Just to be sure, do you understand the distinction I’m making between regulation and moderation?
That’s not what that means. Just the flux is defused by 50% if that’s a correct ratio change in geometry.
I’d be the difference of the brightness between a flashlight focused into a beam, to one focused as wide as possible. The flux is reduced.
Wait, you stuck in a nonlinear temperature switch in the way of a temp coefficient. But you have to select values to get your cluge to work, mine is self biasing. And I still don’t get how you can’t see a pulsed forcing, and a pulsed power source are the same.
You still haven’t explained how reducing the max daytime high and increasing the min night time low is a regulatory process. Over any 24 hour period, it’s a zero sum game.
What matters in min temp, and how much it goes up. Dew points set the clear sky low, because it has to lose 4.21 x as much as just dropping air temp 4 hrs earlier, because the rel humidity was a lot lower. To condense that much water vapor it can’t emit radiation to space, it collides and is absorbed before that. That’s the GHG effect, it just doesn’t turn on till middle of the night after the temp has dropped.
That’s why it’s a regulator, it slows after it cools.
No. The min temp alone means absolutely nothing unless the max temp is unaffected, and this is not the case and your plot is very clear about this. There are inflections in the temperature slope both as evaporation kicks in and warming slows during the day and as dew forms at night returning that latent heat to the surface slowing down its cooling.
Just think about the origin of the Joules that are keeping the min temp from falling faster. They have to come from somewhere.
Yes they come mostly from the tropical oceans, and are blown around the globe cooling. This night time process runs on that, and by itself it’s actually loses energy, but the wind blows, new air is blown in. When it’s stationary, some dew is absorbed, lost to the water table, that drys the air, and the daily range is larger.
Yes. And when this energy was removed from the surface, the surface warming at the point of evaporation slowed down. The result on the average temperature (again the EQUIVALENT temperature of average emissions) is zero. How is this regulating the surface temperature? Just because a different place cools by evaporation than is warmed by condensation doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a zero sum effect on the average.
You need to grasp the big picture. You can’t look at one small, local night time effect and extrapolate it to the whole. You need to account for all effects across the entire planet all at once.
What likely leads to your confusion is Trenberth’s adding latent heat to the energy balance and bundling its return to the surface as ‘back radiation’. In fact, the latent heat and its return to the surface has no NET effect on the average emissions and is corresponding temperature. What you are observing is part of the return of latent heat to the surface that Trenberth mis-labels as ‘back radiation’, Clearly, dew is not radiation.
co2isnotevil December 14, 2017 at 11:08 am
Thanks, co2, but I fear I am confused. Perhaps an example will help. What I’ve said is that there is a control system in the climate which constrains the temperature between remarkably narrow limits (e.g ± 0.3°C over the 20th century).
So let me start with a simple question. Is a flyball governor an active or a passive control system?
According to you, it is a passive control system. Is my understanding of your position correct?
Thanks,
w.
co2, can you tear yourself away from micro6500 and actually answer my simple question? I’m starting to think you’re ignoring me, which is very damaging to my self-esteem and might lead me to need a safe space with puppies and hot chocolate to recover …
w.
Willis,
Sorry, I’m not ignoring you. I’ve actually been skiing for the last several days with limited Internet and will often seem to disappear for weeks at a time until the snow is gone. Besides, I thought I already answered the flyball question. This is an active system as it exhibits significant gain in the feedback loop.
You need a lot of gain so that a small difference can be amplified to have a large effect, where the throttle is the controlling variable whose mechanical input is amplified by adding fuel (or air) to the boiler. The throttle amplifies the relatively small difference produced as the flyball spins faster or slower than expected. The closed loop gain here is huge and on the order of many thousands with an even larger open loop gain (i.e. throttle wide open). By contrast, the open loop gain of the climate system is unity and with unit gain, there can be no more power exiting the system than is arriving, thus there is no amplification.
As I’ve explained many times, the climate system can not be represented as a feedback amplifier, per Hansen, Schlesinger and Roe based on Bode’s analysis. A feedback control system is even more constrained and the climate system does not conform to one of these either.
The effect you’re seeing is the redistribution of latent heat from the tropics to the poles. While this does clamp tropical high temps over the oceans, the energy doesn’t just disappear, but is transferred to polar latitudes making them warmer then they be would be otherwise. To me, the effect you describe is a global redistribution of energy operating over seasonal scale times and distances, while the effect micro6500 is seeing is the same mechanism acting diurnally and locally.
It’s a moderation effect and not a regulation effect. It would be a regulating effect if and only if the cooling in the tropics was not accompanied by warming elsewhere, just like micro6500’s effect would be a regulating effect if and only if the slowdown in cooling during the night was not accompanied with a slowdown in warming during the day,
Tamino, is a expert statistician with multiple college degrees who works for an elite analytical company. Grant Foster is an out of work musician.
–> Ray in SC December 5, 2017 at 3:37 pm said:
No, he spouted about a statistical test that sounds well and good but he failed to point out, that sample size is key and that t-tests are unusual or unreliable when the sample size is low. And that is the point at issue here. Calculating the probability of a null hypothesise on too small as dataset is worse than no significance testing at all!
There is a false confidence built it this specific statistic that favours trust in the test itself. For example, the smaller the dataset, the probability that the sample will be further away from the null hypothesis is greater even when the null hypothesis is true.
However, these statistical results have absolutely nothing to do with reality!* Even when you understand it, the theory – which I actually also happen to love – was originally termed “Experimental Probability” because what happens in the real world can not be incapsulated. Every moment, every action, is an experiment. Very large numbers of these “experiments” will approach the “theory”, but that is all we have; to-date!
We – many of us here – keep coming back to this argument about the validity of probability distribution and its application in the “real world”.
*Okay, they do have something to do with reality, I concede that argument but the connection is not coincident with the particular point I’m trying to make here. 😉
Willis Eschenbach December 7, 2017 at 12:57 am
Upstream, I said as follows:
However, Philip has emailed me and has vigorously denied that he ever posting anything over at Slandering Sue’s place. Unfortunately, since he posted for some time under an alias, I can’t check that out … it’s one of the downsides of using an alias.
So, if he is correct (and there’s no way for me to check), then I have wronged him. So let me say here and now that IF in fact he did NOT post anything at Slandering Sou’s, then I unreservedly apologize for and retract what I said about that episode.
Regarding the other fact, that he is on permanent moderation, on the other hand … what I said about that I still hold to.
Best regards to all,
w.
Willis Eschenbach December 14, 2017 at 12:26 pm
co2, I’m reposting my question here because you don’t seem to have seen it above …
w.
co2isnotevil December 14, 2017 at 11:08 am
Thanks, co2, but I fear I am confused. Perhaps an example will help. What I’ve said is that there is a control system in the climate which constrains the temperature between remarkably narrow limits (e.g ± 0.3°C over the 20th century).
So let me start with a simple question. Is a flyball governor an active or a passive control system?
According to you, it is a passive control system. Is my understanding of your position correct?
Thanks,
w.
co2isnotevil December 18, 2017 at 12:42 pm
Perhaps, but you are damn sure ignoring the question I’ve asked three times now. However, I’m a patient man, I’ll ask it again.
Is a flyball governor an active or a passive control system?
According to you, it is a passive control system. Is my understanding of your position correct?
Thanks,
w.
co2isnotevil, you had said that the system of thermal regulation of the earth by tropical clouds throttling the incoming energy was not an active control system. To clarify matters, I asked:
You answered:
co2isnotevil December 18, 2017 at 2:49 pm
Thanks, sorry for my impatience, hope the skiing was great.
However, you’re disagreeing with yourself. Before, you said:
co2isnotevil December 14, 2017 at 11:08 am
But if an active system requires a separate power supply, where is the “power supply” in the flyball governor, which you say is an active system?
Thanks,
w.
WIllis,
Your position seems to be that the gain is modulated in response to system changes so that the output (temperature) remains constant. I see evidence to the contrary where the gain is relatively constant and the resulting surface emissions are the constant gain times the post albedo solar input and that this gain is independent of total forcing and the subsequent surface temperature over the entire range of surface temperatures and corresponding emissions found on the planet.
Your position would predict that the gain decreases as temperatures increase in order to mitigate the cause of the increase. This is not a characteristic of the measured data when the gain is expressed in the proper dimensionless ratio of power densities. Of course, when the gain is expressed in non linear terms such as degrees per W/m^2, the T^4 relationship comes in to play and the gain decrease as temperatures increase, but this has nothing to do with active control and is the consequence of the SB Law.
I’ve also been able to calculate the climate gain as a function of GHG concentrations and cloud properties and I get the same value that I measure, at least within the margin of error, moreover; the calculated gain increases as CO2 concentrations increase. I don’t see any evidence that cloud properties are changing in order to offset changes in GHG concentrations, but that could just be that the incremental effect of increasing CO2 concentrations is still too small to discern from the error and natural variability.
Or you’re wrong. You can pull static forcing out, but that’s what they do wrong, it’s not static!!!!!!
🙂
Willis,
The power supply is the fuel powering the boiler and the coarse gain control is the throttle. In an electronic amplifier, the gain control is typically a variable attenuator driving a fixed gain amplifier. In the steam engine case, the gain is modulated towards a specific mean by the action of the flyball.
To the extent that the climate gain is stabilized, I would tend to agree, but this is not stabilizing the temperature except to the extent that the input is relatively constant. The climate gain is about 1.6 which is 1/e, where e is the ratio between the RADIANT emissions of the planet and those of the surface and is the equivalent emissivity of a gray model model of the planet.